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Obviously, everything is more complicated than it appears on Instagram. But it is incredibly difficult to live with complicated. It is even more difficult for other people to deal with complicated.
This is life after life after life, in all of the chaos and contradiction of feelings and doings and beings involved. There will be unimaginable joy and incomprehensible tragedy. There will be endings. But there will be no happy endings.
“You tell her this: don’t should yourself. And don’t let anyone should on you, either.”
No matter what kind of Steering Committee formed around me, I had to do the work. Personal responsibility is such a bummer.
Somewhere between our youngest years and our oldest years we learn to hide behind Shoulds and Woulds and Coulds, instead of feeling and facing what Is.
I wanted the comfort and safety of perspective.
Here’s a newsflash, my male friends. “Smile” is not a way to actually cheer a person up. It’s a way to tell them “please adjust your face to my preferences.” And it isn’t expected of men the way it is of women.
My self-isolation reinforced my belief that I was alone in this, that nobody could possibly understand.
Parenting is glorious and glory-less.
Love is the truest magic we do for one another. There is no potion or spell for it, there is just the dazzling act of choosing to be there for one another, over and over again.
marriage. I don’t think the success of a marriage can be measured in the number of years together. The duration of a marriage tells you only that they held on, but not what they held on through.
We said good-bye the Midwestern way—forty minutes of small talk standing in the doorway—and walked to our cars.
